I don’t often agree with the lawyers, but there’s one in Colorado who’s right on the money.

Earlier this week, Kenneth Eastridge, 24, a soldier who had previously been deployed to Iraq, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for being an accessory to the shooting death of another Iraqi veteran, Kenneth Shields.

Prosecutors said another Iraqi vet, Louis Bressler, killed Shields after the two of them fought in a park in Colorado Springs and Eastridge later helped get rid of evidence.

“I don’t have the right to ask for forgiveness, but I just hope that everybody knows someday that I really am sorry,” Eastridge said, visibly shaking as he read his statement in court on Monday

Eastridge’s attorney, Sheilagh McAteer, said during the sentencing hearing that he was the least culpable of the defendants. She said Eastridge didn’t actually participate in the attack but watched from the backseat of a car and helped get rid of evidence because he felt he had to help a friend.

McAteer said that during two tours in Iraq, Eastridge manned a machine gun on top of a Humvee and saw “more battles and bloodshed as a 19-year-old than most will ever see in a lifetime.”

She said he suffered a serious head injury when a roadside bomb struck his Humvee during his first tour, tossing him 30 to 60 feet. She said a pre-sentence report found Eastridge suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, and she blamed the military for discharging him without medical help.

She’s right. We’re repeating the same short-sighted behavior that Americans adopted post-Vietnam, and we’re doomed to pay the same huge price in lost lives and perpetual personal pain unless we find ways to help vets deal with the emotional trauma that they return from combat with.

However, both El Paso County District Judge Theresa Cisneros and Shields’ family rejected McAteer’s argument. “He needs to take responsibility,” Debra Shields said. “He’s a grown man. He can ask for help.”

That’s kind of like asking an accident victim with a broken leg to walk to the hospital for help. Post-traumatic stress disorder is an emotional injury that most vets try to deny, especially active-duty soldiers who fear they’ll lose their jobs if they can’t handle the stress they’re subjected to.

According to a report by The Associated Press, one of the other defendants, Bruce Bastien Jr., was sentenced in September to 60 years in prison. He pleaded guilty to being an accessory to murder in Shields’ death and conspiring to commit murder in the August 2007 death of another soldier, Robert James.

Eastridge, Bastien and Bressler are three of at least five soldiers deployed to Iraq with the 4th Brigade Combat Team who have been accused in slayings in the past 15 months. A sixth faces attempted murder charges.

Army commanders said they have formed a task force to identify any commonalities in the slayings allegedly committed by the soldiers.

To me, that smells like a face-saving maneuver. It’s obvious that these soldiers need help, and a competent commander would be demanding that they get it immediately.